Server Version#: 1.25.5.5492 (Linux)
Player Version#: 5.31.1 on WebOs 3.4.0
I cannot find anyone who answered this. Bear over with me.
I knew that the latest version of the player on LG Smart TV did not work. So I reverted to a very old version which ran perfectly (I even liked the interface better). But unfortunately my husband hit the “update button” by mistake. It is longer possible to roll back to the old version. We cannot watch any of our local contents with subtitles. All subtitles are external SRT format. It has always worked before with “direct play”. Not with the new version. It insists on transcoding which it cannot do. It should not be necessary to transcode at all. This bug has existed for years now. Can we please have old player back? Or will some nice person fix the bug?
We have life-time PlexPass. At least we payed for this.
It is very hard or impossible to get reaction from Plex themselves. It is all in this forum which seemingly no one ever read.
Frustrating.
-hi,
I get the dreaded “Conversion failed. Transcoder exited” error immediately when starting playback.
Transcoding should not happen at all.
Also it worked until the TV app was updated. I used to monitor playback is the Dashboard to verify Direct Play was working. And it used to be ok until the update. Now it does not play at all.
The very same files (mp4 and SRT subtitles files) plays perfectly with Direct Play in web player or using Chromecast. So it must be the TV app somehow. Can it be a missing/defunct codec?
Server Version: 1.25.6.5545
Client Version: 5.31.1
Also having problems with 5.31.1. Playing a certain 4K HDR on my LG TV just shows green and pink pixel garbage on the screen. When transcoding to 1080p it works without problems. Also on other devices the movie plays just fine. Another strange behaviour is that files that used to work now create a high cpu usage on the server due to audio transcoding (files that worked without problems before) which wasn’t the case before. So I assume something must really went wrong with the latest update. Could anyone from the support team confirm?
I think I actually solved the problem myself (sort of)
The latest version of the player for LG TV has become extremely picky about the smallest syntax errors in the SRT subtitle files. The older version was much more “relaxed”.
Especially when there are HTML tags (bold or italic) in the SRT. Missing spaces, apostrophes, anything close to the tag. Then the player just dumps the whole thing with the most generic error message which tells you nothing about the real problem.
If I run the SRT through the great “Subtitle Edit” program there is a feature to remove “common errors” in the file. This actually works. A tedious process when you have several 1000 files, but it can be done. No more “transcoding” errors. And all plays in Direct Play mode - even 4K.
I already used “Subtitle Edit” to extract embedded subtitles to SRT. Plex has NEVER been able to play anything with embedded subtitles without transcoding the whole thing
.
In general subtitle handling sadly has never had much priority in Plex. It works when you are lucky
Simple subtitle issues should never cause an entire 4K movie to be transcoded. It looks awful on the screen and my CPU gets red hot.
The biggest problem actually is that you get these insanely generic error messages. Makes troubleshooting nearly impossible.
Apart from that Plex is still a great product. Couldn’t live without it
(sort of)
